I agree with you. I also feel the same way about people studying a "worthless" degree at a university. I think it should be much more heavily encouraged to let us develop deeper thinkers, artists, and others. We should learn to celebrate that not everything needs to be economically/financially driven.

> We just need to realise that life happyness and meaningful work doesn't mean generating profits for some ceo.

I believe that's GP's point in a nutshell. The thing is for the USA "just need to realize" is a major cultural shift. Not to say it's insurmountable by any means, but making people just realize something is very tricky IMO.

> I think it should be much more heavily encouraged to let us develop deeper thinkers, artists, and others.

Totally agree. I think the combination of emphasizing on STEM for all, along with smaller colleges facing shrinking enrollments, will result in losses to society that won't be obvious/measurable.

Look at the list of notable Hampshire College alumni: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampshire_College

They range from Ken Burns, to one of the founders of Stonyfield Yogurt, to a Debian contributor, along with many other musicians and other creators.

We need to keep this kind of educational freedom alive.

People realize it, just not he old ones with the money.

This reminds me of Scott's post over at Slate Star Codex about Moloch [0]. The issue here isn't so much about _realizing_ the futility in pegging one's happiness to one's profitability. The issue is that for any one person to forgo this standard (s)he would be required to give up the status conferred on being a profit-generating American. This is against his/her interest. Thus, most Americans would rather work harder and be more productive/profitable and maintain their status, than attempt to achieve a more authentic happiness, and risk being perceived as a failure by others. To actually alter this standard would require changing the cultural norms around status and profitability either from the top-down, or from outside entirely.

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

That's a fairly privileged take on it.

Most Americans don't continue to work for status—they continue to work to eat.

> Most Americans don't continue to work for status—they continue to work to eat.

I was speaking with regards to American society under UBI, not the current day.

Teaching in particular comes to mind as something that quite a lot of people might be more interested in if it didn't mean living off low teacher salaries.